NETWORK LATENCY EFFECT ON USER PERFORMANCE IN COLLABORATIVE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT USING TASK DISTRIBUTION MODEL

Abstract

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVEs) are used for training, education, tele- conferencing and assembly of synthetic objects. Network latency, loose coordination, no task distribution strategy and less awareness are the main factors that affect user performance in CVEs. The effect of network latency on user performance in CVE was analyzed. Visual and audio feedback was used for communication between the collaborators. Based on task distribution model, a simulated environment for collaborative assembly task was developed to conduct the experiments. The experiments were performed on different college students comprising of 20 virtual teams of 40 individuals using the latency from 0 to 5000 msec in LAN. The result showed that the user‟s performance was better in dynamic with audio with no latency, but whenever the lag was increased the task completion time increased than dynamic with textual based. At 1000 msec latency, the dynamic with audio and textual modality values were almost the same. Above 1000 msec of latency, the user performance in dynamic with textual was better as compared to dynamic with audio.